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Food delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy are offering more incentives to their delivery partners, a standard practice they follow on festive periods, to ensure minimal disruptions in services on New Year's Eve amid strike call by gig workers' unions. Telangana Gig and Platform Workers' Union (TGPWU) and Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers (IFAT) have claimed that lakhs of workers are set to join the nationwide strike to demand better payouts and improved working conditions. The strike may affect the operations of food delivery and quick commerce firms like Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto on New Year's Eve, when demand is at an all-time high, according to industry sources. Zomato has offered delivery partners payouts of Rs 120 to Rs 150 per order during peak hours between 6 pm and 12 am on New Year's Eve. The platform has also promised earnings of up to Rs 3,000 over the course of the day, subject to order volumes and worker availability, people in the know
India and China signed off 2025 on a positive note, trying to rebuild ties after over four years of fractious relations over the eastern Ladakh boundary conflict. The two countries set on a long road of normalisation after agreeing to end the border face-off in October 2024, bringing to an end years of tension since the 2020 Galwan clash. As peace prevailed at the borders, a key prerequisite for India to establish good relations with China, the two sides stepped up the dialogue process. NSA Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the Special Representatives of India and China on the boundary question, initiated steps towards gradually improving the relations. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, during his visit to China in July, asserted that India and China should build on "good progress" in normalising the bilateral ties to address border-related issues, including de-escalation. In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met at Tianjin under th
India is preparing to rejig methodology for computing CPI and revamp monetary policy mandate for targeting retail inflation in 2026 after a year of benign price situation due to subdued food cost and GST reduction. Consumer Price Index (CPI) based retail inflation remained in the Reserve Bank's comfort zone (2-6 per cent) and is likely to stay that way in the next year also, keeping open the possibility of at least one more reduction in rates by the central bank in the coming months. Besides cooling food prices, the decision of the government to reduce GST rates on about 400 items in September helped in further improving the price situation in the country. The wholesale price index (WPI), too, showed clear signs of easing of inflationary pressures through 2025. Early months recorded positive but declining WPI inflation, reflecting softening price pressures especially in food and fuel categories. By June, WPI entered deflation and the downward trend continued with negative prints in